Tag Archives: expatriate

Where do you go on holiday when you already live in the middle of a sun-sea-and-sand holiday destination? The answer is, somewhere just a little bit different… Like Norfolk. In November. As bleak as that may sound to some of you, this holiday had plenty of sun, sea and sand, just not the holiday brochure …

Many an expat blog discusses the foodstuffs, home comforts and edible luxuries unavailable to them in their overseas posting. Sometimes I imagine them all – thousands of variously dispersed blogging Brits – soaking up the sun somewhere suitably exotic, and longingly salivating for a decent pickled onion or a packet of Scampi Fries. In Dubai …

I found it hard to write about being back home while I was actually there. Like a painter sitting too close to my subject, I lacked perspective and context. Much of my writing about England is, of course, idealised, romanticised nonsense, and it’s very difficult to romanticise something when it’s right there in front of …

I have always found it profoundly pleasurable to be beside a river. There is something wonderful about the way in which water moves, purposeful yet playful, full of cool, soothing promise; the gently shifting patterns of light have the same quiet, hypnotic effect on the viewer as the dancing flames of a log fire. The incessant …

One of the happiest places out here (and possibly on the entire planet) is Global Village. I suppose one could describe it as a sort of cultural theme park (I know that doesn’t sound fun, but bear with me). Surrounded by desert, a twenty minute drive from the city, it consists of many brightly decorated …

It has been drawn to my attention (by my no doubt well-intentioned husband) that this patriotic expatriate’s descriptions of home are somewhat distorted by sentimentality, and that I fail to present a fair or objective case. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I stand accused of wearing rose-tinted glasses when it comes to my reflections …

Why on earth are murder mysteries so comforting? They shouldn’t be, really. Given the sinister plotting of so many psychotic villains (which our quaintest British villages appear to be riddled with) and the violent dispatching of all those country vicars, farmers and baronets, murder mysteries should leave us quaking in our beds at night, terrified …

We don’t really have seasons out here. We have hot and hotter. At the moment we’re just emerging from the hotter part of the year, which means I still stay in the apartment most of the day and when I do go out I wear thin, loose clothes, walk very slowly, and use my favourite old Marks …

This is Homesick and Heatstruck, a blog about coping with my displaced (or misplaced?) existence. For three years now I have lived in a noisy city in the middle of a desert, 4000 miles away from home. One might think that the pangs of homesickness would wane after a while, but one would be quite …

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Homesick and Heatstruck isn’t just the bewildered wittering of a British woman who inexplicably finds herself living in the Middle East (although it is that too), it’s also a ponderous blog about the nature of 'home' and being somewhere other. This is a pseudo-philosophical journal of my quest to thwart my sadness and silliness and embrace my new home... I hope you enjoy it. Please do leave a comment - and come back again soon.

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